


The Contract

by lucyrne (theungenue)



Series: The Contract [2]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Comedy, Explicit Language, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Implied Sexual Content, Miscommunication, Post-Canon, Rhys & Vaughn Brotp, Skin Pizza
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-07 17:03:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11627961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theungenue/pseuds/lucyrne
Summary: Becoming friends with benefits with Sasha seemed like a good idea, but that was before Rhys realized how deeply his feelings went for her. He decides to talk to Vaughn to figure out if he should confess. Rhysha with Rhys & Vaughn brotp.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! This is technically the first Borderlands fic I started to write, but I think it's now up to snuff. Right now I plan on it being a two-shot, the second part being almost complete. Thanks to l0chn3ss for betaing this for me, despite knowing nothing about Borderlands. I owe ya one :)
> 
> Tell me what you all think in the comments. Thanks for reading :)

It was sort of sweet, in a gross, gut-churning, nightmare-fuel kind of way. 

A psycho with hulking muscles and skull-shaped gas mask stooped down to peel the face off a rotting corpse. A smaller psycho stood guard nearby. _Skin pizza._ When the face was harvested, the psycho carried it in its meaty hand with unnatural delicacy. It stared at the face-skin-thing, muttering disjointed phrases only it could understand, before handing it to its buddy in a way that almost resembled tenderness. 

Rhys the Company Man--former Hyperion middle manager, current Atlas CEO--did his damnedest to avoid skin pizza parties. Even now, hiding around a corner and quaking in his skag-skin shoes, Rhys was pretty close to puking up his lunch. But he couldn’t look away from the two psychos exchanging that frayed piece of skin. He was fascinated by the intimacy of the act. 

That was until the small psycho decided to stretch the skin across its own face, and Rhys threw up anyway. 

Rhys returned to the Helios settlement with the salvage and supplies he wanted. Yet his mind kept darting back to the image of two psychos, two beings that supposedly couldn’t feel anything as complex as love or friendship, reaching out to one another. Yeah the moment included skin pizza, and yeah he was probably reading too much into it. He still found the idea of anyone, even a couple psychos, forging a connection on a ruthless planet like Pandora...touching.

 _God_ , he was such a sap these days. 

An ex-girlfriend once told Rhys that he didn’t have a single romantic bone in his body. Well suck on this Stacey: Rhys was full of romantic bones now. All he needed to become a gooey, lovesick dork was a wild year on Pandora and three months dating the most amazing girl he had ever known.

Correction: Three months _banging_ the most amazing girl he had ever known. There was difference. And Rhys ached inside whenever he reminded himself of it. 

At Helios, Rhys carried his bag o’ salvage over his shoulder as he weaved through the settlement. He smiled and waved casually at bowing Children of Helios. Most of them now worked for him at the now-resurrected Atlas, so they still treated him like their savior. While Rhys didn’t really want to be held in such high-esteem, he was a big enough douche to enjoy it while he still could. 

Amid the crowd of Helios refugees, Rhys spotted two women holding hands. He vaguely remembered them working in the tourism department before the big crash, but he didn’t think they were together then. Looks like they found something more than freedom on Pandora’s harsh surface. Rhys’ face softened as he waved. Good for them. 

There was that wistful twinge in his chest again. The one Rhys felt when he spied on those two psychos exchanging skin pizza. The one he felt whenever he left Sasha in her caravan and wondered if he would be invited back in. It wasn’t exactly a feeling of loss, but of a lack. Like there was something he desperately wanted but didn’t have, and the lack of it was making him bleed from the inside out. 

_Wait, isn’t that feeling called envy?_

What would he have to be envious of? Rhys was the head of a company like he always wanted, with stock prices that were slowing crawling back to their former glory. He was surrounded by friends he’d ride and die for. No one was trying to kill him at the moment. And to top it all off, he was getting laid on the regular with a badass, beautiful woman who made him laugh, taught him how to do cool shit, brightened his day simply by existing, made his heart soar with her smile, and uh, um, ahem... 

What was he thinking about again?

Oh yeah, how good Rhys had it made. How he wanted for nothing. Nope, nothing. Not even the privilege of telling Sasha he loved her every single day. Not even the ability to just lay around in bed with her for hours, content to just beat her side. And especially not the right to refer to her as his girlfriend, like, out loud, in front of other people, without getting stabbed. 

Who wants dumb stuff like that?

Rhys spent the rest of his walk trying to forget the question.

He found Vaughn in a structure that was once an office. It was tough to tell whose office it used to be, what with the hole in the wall and the broken glass and all, but Vaughn has spruced it up into a real home. Right now, Vaughn was collecting salvage to help the Children of Helios upgrade their own shacks. Rhys helped out when he could, mostly out of guilt. If not for him, they wouldn’t need to scavenge at all. 

“Hey, you’re back!” Vaughn said when Rhys arrived. “Find anything good?”

“Good? No. Life-changing? See for yourself.” Rhys dropped the bag of salvage to the ground. A few mechanical pieces spilled out, and Vaughn stooped over to put them back in. The gesture briefly reminded Rhys of the skin pizza party back in the desert, and he shook his head to chase the image away.

“We’ve been needing these parts for weeks,” Vaughn said, hauling the bag onto the battered remains of a mahogany desk. “We just didn’t know where to look. You did the Children of Helios a real solid.”

Rhys winked with his cybernetic eye. “What can I say, we’ve got great customer service at Atlas. And nobody died this time.”

A small, round object rolled by Vaughn’s feet. It was a gun scope; not something the Children of Helios would ever need. He picked it up between two fingers and immediately passed it over to Rhys. 

“You should bring that scope to Sasha. Bet she’d love that.”

Rhys turned the scope over in his hand thoughtfully. Sasha would love this. She loved all the gun mods he found for her. With a small smile, he stowed the scope in his pocket. 

And there was that twinge again. 

Becoming friends with benefits with Sasha seemed like such a good idea when it started. Sex is fun. Sasha is _fun._ What could go wrong? Self-sabotage, that’s what. Though he knew this was a bad road to follow, though he _knew_ this would ruin a perfectly good thing better left alone, Rhys didn’t think he could continue keeping her at arm’s length. Not when he had felt far more than friendship for Sasha since before Helios crashed. 

Not for the first time, Rhys sensed that he made a huge misstep with Sasha. He had let his feelings run rampant before their relationship could catch up. Which basically meant he was set up for disaster, right? 

Rhys started talking before he could stop himself. “Hey Vaughn, I have a question. No ulterior motives, no deeper meaning. Just an innocent question.” Rhys cast his eyes about to make sure they were alone, and then cleared his throat. “How do you know when you are in too deep?” 

Vaughn stroked his beard. “Hmmm. Too deep in what?”

“No one, uhhhhhh, thing in particular. Let me rephrase. How do you know when you’re in so deep that the point of no return is nothing but a little dot,” Rhys pointed out the window at nothing in particular, “on the horizon. And then maybe there’s uh, I dunno, a lava trench or something that keeps you from going back to that place. Maybe you don’t really want to go back there, things have been awesome and that old place sucks, screw that place! But it’s also intimidating because if you mess things up, you’re stuck. You’ve got nowhere to go.”

“Does this metaphor take place on Pandora? Elpis?” Vaughn asked, squinted out the window. “Because it’s not just static lava trenches you have to worry about but also the random dangers you can’t predict, like bandit attacks or skags or--”

Rhys lightly massaged his right temple. “Nuh-nuh-nuh-no, there aren’t any bandits. It’s a simple lava planet, no one lives there--” 

“If you can’t cross back over the lava, does that make it the point of no return? Hang on, are there _two_ points of no return?”

“Forget the lava!” Rhys shook his head in frustration. “How do you know when you’ve gone so deep that you’re screwed no matter which decision you make? And when you hit that point, what are you supposed to do?”

Vaughn pursed his lips. “Wow,” he said. “That’s a big random question you got there, Rhys.”

Rhys grumbled something about getting confused by his own metaphor halfway through. 

Vaughn clapped his hands together. “Okay. So, when everything I had ever known crash-landed on a hostile planet, I remember thinking, ‘Whoah this is some serious shit, I’m never gonna be the same after this.’ But even though I was scared, a part of me knew what I had to do. I just had to listen to it, quit the denial. Just like you have to listen to what you’re feeling and fess up to Sasha that you love her and stuff.”

“ _Whaaaaat_?” Rhys’ voice was a mouse’s squeak. He forced himself to laugh. “That’s, ha ha, no. That’s not what I was--this is a hypothetical question that you are reading wayyyyyy too much into. I won’t dignify your baseless accusations with anything other than sarcastic laughter. Because of how funny this whole thing is. Ha. Ha, ha, ha.” 

“Bro, you can lie to yourself but you can’t lie to me. It’s obvious that you’re kinda head over heels. Especially since you two started, ya know…” 

Rhys rolled his eyes, ready to launch into the usual explanation whenever Vaughn got a little too curious for comfort. “Listen. Sasha and I are totally casual.”

“Yeah, but is that all you want? You get this gooey look when she’s around. You don’t miss any chance to talk about her, even now. Rhys, you _are_ in too deep. You’re in so deep you can’t even see light anymore. But you said it yourself, you don’t want to go back.”

Rhys frowned and refused to answer, and not just because Vaughn’s metaphor about seeing light was way better than his about the lava. It never felt good to be read like an open book. It didn’t feel good when Handsome Jack did it, and it didn’t feel good when Vaughn did it. Except in this instance Vaughn was actually trying to help Rhys, not manipulate him. 

“Let’s pretend for a second that you’re not full of shit,” Rhys said. “What should I do? Sasha and I agreed at the start to keep things casual. No strings. I can’t just say, ‘Psyche! I caught feelings. Deal with it.’”

“Well you gotta say something. Not to get too ‘Hyperion’ here,” Vaughn said with exaggerated air quotes, “but if your feelings are different, you violated the conditions of the deal. The contract is void.”

“We didn’t actually sign anything,” Rhys said with a nervous laugh. He looked almost embarrassed. “I totally offered her an NDA as a courtesy, HR standard issue, but she wasn’t into it.”

Sasha had actually told him to shove his HR paperwork where the sun don’t shine. It turns out, people who didn’t live in a space station populated by their coworkers didn’t need to go through HR to set up a date or compel their partners to sign nondisclosure agreements. Pandora was a weird place. 

Vaughn sighed. “The point is, you can’t keep seeing Sasha casually if it’s not casual for you anymore. Both of you will end up getting hurt. That’s what I think, anyway. Take it or leave it.”

There was a reason he hardly spoke to Vaughn about his romance problems in college. His advice was too on the nose. Sure, fessing up to Sasha was _right_ thing to do, but it wasn’t the _easy_ thing to do, and what Rhys really wanted was validation that taking the easy route was okay. And as usual, Vaughn didn’t give him that. 

Actually, none of his friends did. Not Fiona, not Yvette, and certainly not Sasha. He put his hand in his pocket and rolled the gun scope between his fingers. Rhys wondered if the universe threw him together with these people on purpose. Like it _knew_ he was a jackass and needed some heavy-handed help to get his head on straight. 

He also wondered if the universe knew whether or not he and Sasha would last forever. Would it tell him if it did? There weren’t any easy answers to these things. Maybe that was something Rhys should start getting used to .

“You know what Vaughn?” Rhys plucked at a thin lock of hair hanging over his forehead, and then smoothed the rest back. He needed to look sharp. “I will see Sasha tonight, and I’m gonna settle all of this once and for all. When you see me next, I will either be completely devastated, a husk of the man that I used to be, or I’ll be happier beyond my wildest dreams. Hopefully the second thing.” 

Vaughn nodded gravely and placed a hand on Rhys’ shoulder. “I’ll be ready for both situations. Good luck, bro.”

Rhys’ cocky grin faltered, and he eyed Vaughn’s hand. “You...you don’t have to sound so worried. I mean...it could go okay. Have a little faith in me.”

“Oh, yeah,” Vaughn said, snatching his hand back. He scratched the back of the his head, ashamed. “It could go ok. Or it might not. That stuff you said about becoming a husk of your former self is making me anxious. But--but it’s gonna be fine! You’ll be fine.”

Perhaps asking Fiona for advice about this would’ve been a better idea. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, bro,” Rhys said. He took his leave, feeling a little shakier than when he arrived, but still resolute. 

Rhys didn’t know exactly where Sasha was. These days she drove around in the caravan, sometimes helping Fiona with her vault hunting exploits, sometimes helping him fix up Atlas. All he had to do was ping her ECHO comm. Easy peasy.

Before he engaged the link, Rhys paused.

Here it was, the point of no return. It wasn’t anything like crossing a lava trench, or even jumping into a dark void. Rhys wished it something that dramatic. It was easier to test fate at the end of a gun, or behind the wheel of a speeding car. You couldn’t think too much, you couldn’t look back. You just acted and accepted your decision, for better for worse.

Vaughn was right, things may turn out badly. But Rhys would never know until he took the leap. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhys takes Vaughn's advice to tell Sasha how he feels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it's been so long! This fic is complete! Yay!
> 
> I wrote most of this before I wrote 'Friends Who Bang,' the prequel, which is why there's some reference to it. However, you don't need to read it to enjoy this chapter. There's gonna be one more prequel added to the series that takes place after 'Friends Who Bang' but before 'The Contract' from Sasha's POV. I won't tell you went to expect it, just that it's in the works!
> 
> Enjoy! I look forward to reading your feedback :)

When Rhys first landed on Pandora, no one warned him about how often he’d have to jump in and out of moving vehicles. Well, there was actually a number of things nobody ever warned him about. This one just happened to be really rough on his knees.

A plume of dust rose behind the caravan as its wheels pummeled the dry earth. Rhys watched it approach on the side of the dirt road, and once he judged it to be close enough he broke into a fast jog. The vehicle caught up to him in a few short moments, decreasing its speed until they were almost parallel. 

The door flew open. Rhys didn’t need to look inside to see who was driving. 

“Need a lift?” Sasha called. 

As Rhys sprinted, a jolt of pain flashed across his ribcage. Heart hammering in his chest, he grabbed hold of the caravan and leapt inside. He heaved the caravan door closed behind him. The engine accelerated with a roar, sending Rhys tumbling into the kitchen table. Groaning, he maneuvered onto the musty couch to rest until his body stopped screaming at him.

“Walk it off, Rhys,” Sasha called over her shoulder.

Rhys remained immobile on the couch, dazed. It was in moments like these that he really took stock of what his life had become, and how the hell he and Sasha winded up together in the first place.

The conversation that launched a thousand hookups had been about work. Rhys had been chin deep in Atlas deadlines and to-do lists, and Sasha had just gotten a second bartending gig to stack on top of her first. It was a drastic change of pace, burning the candle at both ends without knowing if there was a vault of treasure waiting for them. They had vented and reminisced for hours, inching closer and closer to each other as the night wore on.

There had always been a chemistry between them, but it never thickened into anything more until Sasha noted out of the blue that sex was relaxing. Rhys had agreed that yeah, sex calmed him down too. Then he had said that friends, good friends at least, tended to help each other let off steam. Sasha had agreed, yes, indeed, good friends did do that. 

Rhys didn’t know what they talked about next. He just remembered his mouth covering hers and the vivid thrill of Sasha nimbly popping the buttons of his waistcoat. 

It was only after they lay in bed together that they agreed (by verbal contract, not paper) to become friends with benefits. It didn’t feel like a big deal at the time. Just two friends basking in the afterglow of their friendly friendship. But Rhys had still known that this arrangement wouldn’t last forever. He just didn’t realize that he would be the one to disrupt it. 

His legs were unsteady when he joined Sasha in the driver’s seat, probably from his rough tumble into the caravan. Not from the fact that he was nervous. Definitely not that.

Rhys searched his pockets to find the scope he collected earlier that day. Settling into the passenger seat, he held the scope right under Sasha’s nose. 

“Ooooh, this is new,” Sasha said. Her eyes darted between the road and the scope. “Is it a Dahl? Those are rare these days. Thanks so much, Rhys.” Her hand left the steering wheel to snatch the scope and squirrel it away somewhere in her clothes. Pandorans, they had a lot of pockets. 

“Rare doesn’t mean better,” Rhys said with a snort. “I’m working on a prototype. Might need someone to test it out when it’s ready in, oh, a few years. Maybe, hopefully.” He drummed his fingers on the dashboard. Sasha couldn’t get too mad at him if she was busy driving. Just do it. Start talking. Doesn’t matter what about. He’d find his way to the point eventually.

“I saw the grossest thing today,” Rhys began.

“Yeah?” 

“Skin pizza.”

“Ugh, say no more. Actually keep going, I’m bored and could use a gross story.”

“It was like some sort of psycho date. One of them gave his buddy some greasy face-skin as a gift. Kind of the way you’d give someone, I dunno. Flowers. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen.” 

Sasha cringed at the mention of flowers. Not a good sign. Did people give flowers to their loved ones on this planet? He had thought so, back in the biodome, all those months ago. Obviously Rhys couldn’t have completely misread her that day, given that they were now seeing each other. _Casually_ , he added as a sad afterthought. 

Doubt wormed into his heart, and he squeezed his eyes shut to center himself. 

“So I got a message from Fiona,” Sasha said, staring ahead at the road. “She’s been in a dust up nearby Sanctuary. Don’t worry, Athena’s around. They’re staying in hiding for now. Which means we got the place in Hollow Point _and_ the caravan to ourselves. Unless you’re too busy with Atlas,” she added with a quick glance. 

Rhys wasn’t sure if Fiona’s absence was a good or bad thing. He suspected that Fiona knew that Rhys liked her sister more than a fuck buddy should. She might’ve been a good buffer, or even an excuse to leave quickly if things went poorly. Or maybe her presence would’ve made Rhys lose his nerve. 

“I think I can pencil you in for the next...ten, twelve hours,” Rhys said with a shrug he hoped was nonchalant. 

“Great!” The caravan took a sharp turn and sped straight off the road. Somewhere in the back, Rhys heard what sounded like dozens of broken plates and glass bottles crashing into the wall. “I found a nice cliff the other day. Nothing around for miles. It’s not too far, and the view is nice. I have some junk we can chuck over the side.”

“Oh I see, we’re off to have some good old-fashioned street urchin fun. Recreational littering.”

Sasha snickered. “If you don’t want in, I’ll just toss your share myself.”

“Whoah, I never said that. I wanna have street urchin fun. You can’t have my litter!” 

It was dusk when the caravan arrived at Sasha’s special cliff. During the journey, Rhys chatted about every subject he could think of, apart from the fact that he was hideously in love with her. He kept waiting for a better moment, a less awkward opportunity to unmask himself as sap with attachment issues. But the real thing holding Rhys back was a dark feeling of foreboding that had crept over him ever since he spoke to Vaughn. A feeling that things weren’t going to go the way he hoped they would. 

When he wasn’t talking, Rhys was looking at her, memorizing her face. He wanted to bottle up her smile and keep it, a souvenir to look at when his soul felt dark and heavy and he needed something to light it up again. 

The caravan slowed as they drove up an incline, the dark red peaks of far away mountains dropping out of view. Though she was a heavy-handed driver most of the time, Sasha was cautious as she parked the car along the edge of the crag. The view through the caravan dashboard was a splash of bright orange sky. 

Rhys’s eyes trailed downward and his smile froze. Right outside the caravan, the rocks dropped off suddenly into a plunging ravine lined with jagged rocks that looked like rows of skag teeth. 

“Is--is that a lava trench?” Rhys squeaked.

“Nah, just a regular trench. Still pretty cool, right?” Sasha pointedly gave Rhys a once over, wearing a sly smile. “The view is way better on the roof.”

Rhys caught the impish look in her eyes and paled. If he went on the roof with her, they would be too busy enjoying the benefits of their friendship to discuss the possibility of a real relationship. 

“Let’s enjoy the beautiful view indoors first,” he said.

Sasha rolled her eyes and exhaled with a quick huff. “Okay. You’ve gotta get over this thing you have about banging outside. I promise you, no one’s gonna pop out of the bushes and make fun of your skinny white ass. Except me, but I’m kinda into it.” 

Despite himself, Rhys stood a little straighter and puffed out his chest. Even if Sasha shot down the whole romance thing, at least she thought his ass was nice. 

She took hold of the lapels of Rhys’ jacket and pulled him closer, catching his lips in a hungry kiss. 

Rhys’ stupid, traitorous mouth responded in kind immediately, and his equally stupid, traitorous brain had the gall to feel pleased about the situation. It crossed his mind that sleeping with Sasha and _then_ telling her they should stop sleeping together (casually) was a dick move. Deeply unethical. An absolutely horrendous low, even for him. But still tempting, because why ruin a good thing?

Because he broke the rules. Because loving someone meant not being a dick to them for your own gain. 

Rhys internally rolled his eyes at his own damn self. This is what he got for being such an upstanding example of sexual morality. 

Rhys broke the kiss and lightly held Sasha back by the shoulders. “Let’s sit down for a hot second--”

Sasha’s eyes lit up. “I like the way you think.”

“Wha--Agh!”

Sasha threw her arms around his neck and leaped forward. Her thighs clamped around his waist in an instant, toppling the both of them onto the table. Her hands are everywhere, grazing across his chest, touching his neck, reaching for his belt--

_“The contract is void!”_ Rhys screeched suddenly. Sasha slid off of him, surprised, and Rhys rolled off the table and fell on the floor. When he scrambled back up, he was breathless. “The contract is void,” he repeated with a swallow. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Sasha hazarded a nervous laugh. “Um, you can’t do what?” 

In that moment, Rhys was consumed by it all. By his love for her, by the impossibility of it, by his own sheer incompetence. That he could have something so good and handle it so clumsily that he lost everything. If kissing her to oblivion was the solution, Rhys would’ve done it. But nothing ever worked out so well, not for him. 

“I can’t keep pretending, it’s not fair to you,” he said.

Sasha became still. He saw true confusion cross her face, and then a flash of something he couldn’t pinpoint. Fear? Horror? “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice brittle and threatening to shatter. 

Rhys’ instincts told him to start lying his ass off so he could make his escape, but this was _Sasha,_ not some shady Pandoran business deal. He couldn’t just cut and run. 

“Okay, so I know this is coming out of nowhere,” he began, “and this casual thing we’ve had has been really fun. But things have changed, _I’ve_ changed, and I can’t--I mean, I _want_ to, but Vaughn said--and you know, I actually agree with him, so it’s not just Vaughn saying this, I’m also saying it, one hundred percent. It was actually all my idea to begin with, I said it first! He just--”

“Say _what?”_

The truth tumbled out of Rhys’ mouth like the disaster it was. “I fell in love, alright? I broke the rules.” 

The silence between them was deeper and more horrifying than the sharp rock-laced canyon outside. Rhys’ urge to leap into that canyon and end his pitiful existence was strong. Judging by the blank shock on Sasha’s face, the twitch of her eyes towards the windows, she was resisting the same thing. 

Rhys’ voice was very small when he spoke again. “You know, I have to tell you all this because--”

“You don’t have to explain.” Sasha turned away from him to stare at the desert beyond the caravan window. “I know what you’re trying to say.”

Rhys felt as trapped as a worm speared by a needle, wriggling frantically in a vain attempt to get free. “Oh. Can I ask you your thoughts on this?”

Sasha turned to him with over enthusiastic eyes and a huge, plasticy grin. She clapped him on the shoulder.

_“Good for you!”_

Rhys opened and closed his mouth silently like a stunned goldfish. Meanwhile, Sasha grabbed her plastic bag of litter, causing the glass bottles within to clang together. “I think I’m just gonna, um.” Sasha gestured awkwardly towards the ladder leading to the caravan roof. “Sit out there for second. Throw some junk off a cliff. Yeah.”

Once she was up on the roof, Rhys crumpled. 

Several minutes passed, or maybe an hour, or maybe more. Sitting on the couch in a daze, staring up at the ceiling, Rhys divorced himself completely from mundane things like the perception of time. He was paralyzed. Willfully paralyzed. Moving or thinking too much would bring reality down on him like a landslide, and despite knowing this disaster was coming all along, Rhys was not emotionally prepared to deal with the fallout. 

Those three damning words repeated in his head in a twisted chorus, growing more indecipherable with every repetition. _Good_ for you. Good _for_ you? Good for _you_?! What the hell did that even mean? Are these words even real? Did he just hallucinate the entire conversation? 

Rhys sat up. Now that he thought about it, it was a weird thing to say to someone who had half-confessed their love. Half-confessed--that in itself was the problem. He’d hardly gotten a word out. A small flicker of hope ignited in his chest, one he was very quick to stamp out. Sasha wasn’t stupid, she probably saw where his confession was going and tried to save him the trouble and humiliation. But he didn’t know for sure. And he wouldn’t, unless he asked.

With leaden feet, Rhys moved toward the ladder. Clarity. That was his goal here. As long as there was any ambiguity, Rhys would keep a candle burning for Sasha like the desperate sap he was. Once she stated in no uncertain terms that they were over, Rhys would dissociate his way back home and straight into Vaughn’s chiseled embrace. 

The sun had hardly sunk in the sky since Sasha had left him alone. Maybe it wasn’t too late. 

He climbed to the roof. Sasha sat on the edge facing the ravine, her bag of garbage full and untouched. What struck him was how small she looked. She was hunched over, hugging one knee to her chest and letting the second dangle over the side of the caravan. Like she didn’t have the heart to partake in street urchin by herself. 

As he sat down beside her, Sasha straightened and put on a friendly face that didn’t quite meet her eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” Rhys said, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was sorry for. It seemed like the right conversation opener, given her morose look. 

To avoid looking at him, Sasha busied herself with her bag of garbage, withdrawing a glass bottle. “Uh for what? I’m fine, nothing’s wrong! I just needed a minute to digest what you said.” 

Rhys’ stomach bottomed out. No one ever ‘digested’ half-spoken declarations of love they were happy about. The rejection he had been bracing himself for, this was it. He looked directly towards the sunset to give himself some plausible deniability when the inevitable tears began. 

Sasha wound her arm back and threw an empty bottle into the ravine. It caught the light as it bounced against the rock wall twice before shattering in a shower of glass. “I think it might be better if we don’t see each other for a while,” she said. “Or, well, ever.”

That single sentence gave Rhys whiplash. “What? You want to torch our entire friendship over this?” Rhys knew he sounded whiney, but when you hit a certain level of emotional rock bottom, whining was all you had left. “I agree the benefits have to go, no arguments there. But everything else, too? The whole point of friends with benefits is to still be friends. Unless...”

Unless the only reason Sasha had been hanging out with him was because she got sex out of it, and now that he had admitted that he didn’t want a casual relationship, she had no need for him anymore. Rhys grasped helplessly at the caravan roof, desperate for some physical stability as his mind reeled. 

“Of course I don’t _want_ to,” Sasha said. She still refused to look at him. “But, ugh, how do I put this? Stuff’s gonna change and I think it would be better if I wasn’t around for it.”

“Not that much has to change! We broker a new deal. Draw new boundaries, draft a new contract. Not a legally binding one or anything, but if we just set the right guidelines--”

Sasha squawked with abject frustration. “God, you can be such a dense jackass. You’re gonna make me come right out and say it. _You_ get to be all coy with your special little news, but _I_ have to be the blunt one because you’re as perceptive as an old shoe. It’s so unfair.” 

Finally, Sasha turned to face him, determination in her eyes. “I don’t want to hang out and act like nothing more ever happened between us. And I definitely can’t watch the two of you being all--” Sasha pantomimed two mouths crashing and tangling into each other, with the chomping noises to match. ” _\--_ together. Sorry, I know I should be more mature about this, but I’m not, so I’m just gonna deal the only way I know how.”

She stared at Rhys hard, daring him to speak. 

“I’m confused,” was all he said.

Sasha threw her hands up in the air. “Bah, of course you are! How can I possibly spell it out any clearer? We agreed from the start that we’d only stay friends who bang until one of us found someone better. Rhys, I’m sure they’re great, whoever they are. Glad things are working out. But I’d rather be launched out of an airlock than watch you ride off into the stupid sunset together. Okay, not literally, but do you get what I mean?” 

As the wheels in his mind turned, he mimicked Sasha’s hand gestures representing two people...kissing each other? Was one of them Rhys? If that was true, who was the other one? Was that the problem?

“You don’t want be my friend anymore,” Rhys said slowly, staring at his hands, hope rising in his chest, “because--”

Sasha shouted over him. “Because I am _so in love with you!_ You dumbass,” she added as an afterthought. 

She hugged her knees to her chest and stared out over the canyon. It was a good thing that she chose that moment to look away from Rhys, because his face was beet red and wearing a wide-eyed expression of pure joy. Not even a psycho staring at fresh skin pizza could compare.

“I’m not dating anyone,” Rhys said. “I have four friends on a planet of misfits and murderers, not counting the robots. Who could I possibly be dating?” 

“This planet is full of hot people,” Sasha replied testily. Rhys threw his head back with spontaneous laughter. 

Sasha buried her face in her arms with a groan that sounded both heartbroken and frustrated. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll stop laughing.” Rhys scooted closer to her and cleared his throat. “What I was trying to explain downstairs--poorly, I might add--is that I fell in love _with you._ _You_ are the person I have feelings for, and you just said that you have feelings for me.” Rhys paused to give his words time to sink in. “There is no third person standing between us, except maybe for our mutual inability to talk directly about our emotions.”

With every word he said, Sasha relaxed and opened up a little more. By the time Rhys got to the part where he was in love with her, Sasha was staring into his odd eyes, absolutely gobsmacked. 

“Wow,” Sasha said with a slow, disbelieving shake of her head. Her warm brown skin flushed all the way down her neck and up to her ears. “I can’t believe I’m worse at explaining feelings than you are.”

“Well,” Rhys said, “You’re beautiful, you’re smart, you have an encyclopedic knowledge of firearms. It was only a matter of time before we found something you were bad at.”

When Sasha grabbed his jacket by the lapels to kiss him again, this time Rhys did not resist in the slightest. The great thing about falling in love with someone he had already been hooking up with was that now that they were _together_ together, there was no shyness, no stumbling. Rhys knew how Sasha wanted to be kissed, how she wanted to be held, and he could finally just _do it_ without worrying about giving himself away. 

But he wasn’t alone--Sasha became a woman unleashed, tearing at his hair and clothes, and kicking her entire bag of garbage into the ravine in her scramble to get on top of him. Like she’d been hungry for more but had been left wanting until this moment. 

Rhys only vaguely noticed the thunderous shattering of dozens of bottles and dishes echoing in the distance.

By the time they parted to take a breather, they had missed the romantic sunset. The Pandoran sky was a velvet indigo, dotted with shimmering stars amid a glowing Elpis and Scooter’s space billboard blinking in the distance. Rhys touched his wild hair; no hair gel was strong enough to withstand Sasha’s roving hands. 

Rhys took her hand, and as their fingers intertwined Sasha sighed. “What the hell do we do now?” she asked, her green eyes wide and glowing even in the dark. “I’ve never gotten this far in a relationship before.”

Rhys shrugged; he hadn’t ever gotten this far either. “Sign the papers and make it official, obviously.” Sasha squeezed his hand threateningly. “Kidding, kidding. I’ve got no idea. I didn’t really think that far ahead.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Sasha said. “Let’s just start here.”

It was so simple, it quietly blew Rhys’ mind. No overthinking or worrying about what may or may not happen. 

The point of no return was already miles behind them. All that they had left to do was _go._


End file.
